Startup Weekend Outside Perspective
Monday, June 2nd, 2008Startup Weekend has had a major impact on the communities it has touched and there is often a lot written about a particular weekend after it has ended. Although we can’t cover all the great feedback that is out there, I thought I would post something I read the other day about the Portland experience. This post comes from Varun Thota, student at Portland State, who attended the weekend and posted a great reflection. Link to the live post is here:
As a newbie to the Startup community, the 54 hours that is “Startup Weekend,” was one amazing, hectic, fun filled event. I was able to learn a lot from some very experienced people, meet and network, get advice and also help in a new web startup that I can’t wait to use and hopefully see it grow.
Introduction
Startup weekend is an event where a group of people show up, network, chart a bunch of ideas out and hopefully at the end of the day, produce a product. And if they don’t, it’s just fun to meet people, have some good food and just immerse yourself in Web 2.0 culture.
I showed up with @dodeja Friday night and slowly started mingling with the crowd. The first few words I had with a couple of people were, “Hey, I follow you on Twitter! Great to finally meet you!”
Soon we settled into groups after a number of ideas were written on the board, and people chose the ideas they really wanted to work on. I think the format for startup weekend has changed, where instead of producing one startup, we came out with not just 1 or 2, but 4 startups! I happened to get involved with the crew, where founder @Dodeja, had an idea for a site providing an online streaming service for the trance community. Head over to his blog to learn more about the site Mugasha.
What I’ve Learned
As a business student, learning about the beginning of any startup and being involved in it, is very valuable. Darius A. Monsef, creator of colourlovers.com was a great mentor, who thought of the name Mugasha and provided some valuable feedback/advice on getting a startup on its feet. We were also the youngest team, comprising of a coder, design and graphics, marketing and business dev, pretty much a perfectly balanced team. We were able to collaborate easily, and with no framework, be able to agree/disagree on various aspects of the site. It quickly came together, and before you knew it, we had a working prototype.
I was able to learn what it takes to get a web startup started and working. How to market it, and where to start, what were the essential first steps and what to look out for in the future. With the experience of the Colourlovers team and the ambition of the rest of the team, I was lucky enough to soak up so much information that will be so valuable for me once I decide to have my own startup. As part of the business development team, we looked into different aspects of the site such as what service it will provide, what the legal issues were concerning sharing artist content, whether or not to incorporate or form an LLC. We also looked into different ways of monetizing the site, weather or not we could and what steps we would take to implement these strategies.
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Needless to say, some very great stuff in his article and check out his blog to read the rest of that post with a bit more about the companies coming out of the weekend.
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